Kristine Kozik:West Lafayette

    

   On May 5th, 1977 in West Lafayette, Indiana,  Kristine Kozik was headed out to a party. She wore a light green scoop neck tee shirt, denim gaucho pants, and dark blue sandals with a light blue trim. She had on a gold tone watch and a gold ring with a cluster of opals. She carried a brown leather shoulder bag with scroll work. The 19 year old Purdue student borrowed a sorority sister’s car but never returned. 

   Police questioned her friends and acquaintances. Two young men were considered suspects. Her parents and friends said she would never run away. She was an A student and very responsible.  She would not run off. 

   They were proven right when the borrowed car was found parked near a campus library on May 18th. It was locked and the keys were in the glove box. Very little gasoline had been used. None of Kristine’s belongings were in the car. 

   Police used helicopters to search for her. They found nothing even with a bird’s eye view. 

   Tips came in. Two different women reported that a man tried to enter their cars as they were leaving a West Lafayette bar. They both stated it was the same night that Kristine went missing. 

   The school term ended and many students moved home for the Summer. Weeks continued to grind on.  Searches continued. 

   On June 20th Kristine was found in a “Lover’s Lane”.  An out of the way road with overgrown brush, this was a dumping ground.  Beer cans, trash, anything people wanted to discard littered the ground. It was an old driveway or farm lane used to access a field.  It was not far from the back of Wea Elementary School. 

Teenagers would drive down it to drink and have some privacy.  It was on the edge of a wooded area and near Wea Creek. 

   I think I found it on Google Earth.  A concrete barrier blocks anyone from driving down it now.  In the Summer it is so overgrown that it doesn’t look like it has ever been accessible. 

   The man who found her said he did not see her body there Monday but on Tuesday it was in plain view.  I wondered what he might have been doing back there. He might have been picking blackberries. That would be a good spot and they would have been ripe. He could have been picking up aluminum cans for a little extra cash or just cleaning up the area. 

   Animals had been at the body. Half of Kristine was found in the “lane”. The other half was found in the adjacent field.  It seems likely that the body was together in the field all the time that she was missing and the half that was later found in the lane was dragged there by animals the night before it was discovered. Kristine’s body was nude. None of her clothes or jewelry were found. Her handbag was also never found. 

   Police and forensic experts said that the separation of her body into two pieces was the result of animal activity. Indiana has plenty of coyotes even in urban areas. This could also have been the work of domesticated dogs who lived in the area. 

   This immediately reminds me of Ann Harmeier, Julie Ann Seyfried and Terri Jo Ann Darlington. All were found in cornfields.  Julie Ann Seyfried’s murder site was described almost exactly the same way:A shady area near a field where the killer parked with the assault and murder happening in the nearby field. The body is left in the tall corn and won’t be discovered until Fall. But in this case the animals dragged half of the body to a spot where it was discovered. 

    Cornfields and woods are great cover and easily found all over Indiana.  It could be three separate killers each just using the landscape at hand.  Is it easier to think of three separate killers or just one?  Both options are terrifying. 

   There are similarities and there are differences.  I don’t think a serial killer will necessarily do everything the exact same way. 

   I just keep thinking of Jeffrey Lynn Hand. In 1972 he killed Indiana State University student Pamela Milam in Terre Haute. He abducted her and drove her car around for a while before murdering her and leaving her bound and gagged in the trunk. (It would go unsolved for decades until DNA proved Hand to be the killer.) In 1973 he picked up a married couple who were hitchhiking. He tied up Mrs. Thomas and drove off and murdered Mr. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas escaped and brought the police. Jeffrey Lynn Hand was arrested, tried and convicted.  He was sent to a mental institution but released in 1976 on a technicality.  So, Jeffrey Lynn Hand is free at the time of Kristine Kozik’s murder.  My personal theory is that he trolled college towns for victims. 

   I think he also murdered Linda Sue Ferry in Lafayette in August of 1977. She was found in the trunk of her car almost exactly like Pamela Milam. 

   There is also the Bloomington, Indiana murder of Vickie Lynn Harrell in 1972. She was abducted from a college town and dumped nude on the side of the road. Her murder and Pamela Milam’s were linked in the news at the time. 

   Is it easier to think about two or three serial killers running around Indiana or lots and lots of different killers?  

  In January of 1978 Jeffrey Lynn Hand was shot and killed by police during an attempted daylight abduction of a woman in Kokomo.  

   We may never know who killed Kristine.  But, on the other hand, we just might. Everyone thought Pamela Milam’s murder was ice cold and unsolvable. But in 2019, DNA evidence positively linked her murder to Jeffrey Lynn Hand. (His sons kindly provided DNA samples to help close this cold case.)

   Kristine Kozik came from Downer’s Grove, Illinois.  Her parents were William and Alice Kozik. In an article published a year after their daughter’s murder they were still absolutely devastated. Kristine was the second daughter that they had lost.  Their oldest daughter had suffered from a chronic illness and died sometime before Kristine. I was unable to find her name or the names of any other siblings. 

   In that same article William Kozik stated that he was seeing so many similar murders of young women in the news. He felt it was an epidemic. He felt that Kristine’s killer would not stop killing women.  I have to say I agree with him on all points.  

   William and Alice joined a grief support group where they met other parents of murdered young women. 

   Kristine’s murder is still unsolved. 

   Rest in peace Kristine.